Slaughter-free milk rolled out
'ORGANIC milk from cows that will be retired to a sanctuary once their milking days started its first deliveries this week.'
http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/livestock/slaughter-free-milk-rolled-out/40705.article
National Geographic - July 2011 - Food Varieties Extinction
I've just read an interesting article about the sustainability of our food sources for the future. I was amazed to discover that we have an ever-dwindling food variety, where we rely on a much, much smaller number of high yielding varieties e.g. 408 varieties of tomato in 1903, are now down to 79 in 1983; 544 varieties of cabbage in 1903, are now down to just 28 in 1983. Often these are also reliant on expensive chemical fertilisers and toxic pesticides to maintain their health and cropping yield.
The same is true for livestock e.g. where many dairy farmers are stocking Holstein cows, designed for maximum yield but not the most robust of animals I understand; or stocking just Large White pigs. It is easy to see how a particular mutant strain of disease could easily wipe out a whole breed/variety before we could find an antidote and thus wreak havoc to our food supply. One only has to remember the great potato famine in Ireland, where too much reliance was put on the Lumber potato.
It's certainly worth a throught.
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